SECOND ALZHEIMER'S SONNET	Index

How many things will I forget today?
How many times stop still, asking myself
what I was going to do? In what new ways
will my mind play tricks on me? What a wealth
of experience she tosses to the wind,
masterpieces lost even to me.
Without them, am I still one-of-a-kind,
a unique loop of interpreted memory?
How much can one forget -- an actor's name,
the novel one finished reading last night,
where the damn car keys are -- and still remain
a bubble of identity riding a wave of light?

(A turd in sewage remembers a meal,
my muse remarks. It's I who make you real.)

-Marilyn Nelson
Obsidian III

			TED KOOSER IS MY PRESIDENT	Index

When I travel abroad, I will invoke
Ted’s poems at checkpoints:
yes, barns, yes, memory, gentility,
the quiet little wind among stones.
If they ask, You are American?
I will say, Ted’s kind of American.
No, I carry no scissors or matches.
Yes, horizons and dinner tables.
Yes, weather, the honesty of it.
Buttons, chickens. Feel free
to dump my purse. I’ll wander
to the window, stare out for days.
Actually, I have never been
to Nebraska, except with Ted,
who hosted me dozens of times,
though we have never met.
His deep assurance comforts me.
He’s not big on torture at all.
He could probably sneak into your country
when you weren’t looking
and say something really good about it.
Have you noticed those purple blossoms
in a clump beside your wall?

-Naomi Shihab Nye
MIDWEST QUARTERLY REVIEW

My Friend's Divorce

I want her
to dig up
every plant
in her garden,
the pansies, the penta,
roses, rununculas,
thyme and the lilies,
the thing
nobody knows the name of,
unwind the morning glories
from the wire windows
of the fence,
take the blooming
and the almost-blooming
and the dormant,
especially the dormant,
and then
and then
plant them in her new yard
on the other side
of town
and see how
they breathe!

-Naomi Shihab Nye
Clackamas Literary Review

			THIS IS THE TIME FOR WHICH WE HAVE BEEN WAITING	Index

(Dear Jim, I #fnally got your letter enclosing your letter enclocussing your letter which was so ompportant foe me, thannkuok yuon very much.  In time this fainful bsiness will will soonfeul will soon be onert. Tnany anany goodness.  If S lossiee eli wyyonor wy sinfsignature. I hope I hope I make it. -Bill) The first snowfall brings chaos. First the horizon disappears, then you disappear. When William Carlos Williams suffered his first stroke he was 68 years old, in 1951. His second, the following year. The man loved our American speech. Vulgar & graceless as oversized boots he loved it. The pimply- faced girl he loved. Forms inside things gnarly to the touch. Smokestacks, mustard weed. The steely river filling with acid & sparrows picking in the dirt, like Death. Yet still just sparrows. Beauty of marigolds, & fried oysters. Beauty of spiderwebs, Breughel's hunters in the snow. Except maybe what the poet saw & heard was in his own head! Maybe in Rutherford, N.J. there was nothing. Maybe he was in despair, fierce lover of women & adulterer & this morning waking to discover someone has dressed him in an old man's underwear— gunmetal-gray, woolen-itchy, soiled cuffs at bony wrists & ankles & the crotch unsnapped. Opens his mouth to curse & words choke like phlegm. A doctor doesn't expect to die like the rest of us … Waking in the sun in Flossie's garden back of the yellow house the terror strikes him maybe he's dreamt it all?—male hands lifting a thrashing bloody infant from between female thighs, & ironweed along the railroad embankment tough enough to thrive in cinders, & there he's laughing typing on the old manual words leaping astonished out of the mute keyboard, keys so worn you can't read the letters. And those clouds— Clouds I've been noticing this morning, too. Diesel-dirted, broken & yet dignified in motion moving from west to east effortless above the pines in this New Jersey smudged sky. In March 1963 the final stroke. "Died in his sleep." Eyes moving restlessly down the naked body. On a gurney? Since when? The shock of it, his young male body restored. Svelte dark down of the chest, groin & soft stirring penis. Winter-pale haunches, muscles hard as bone. Lifts his head. Where? Christ, he's alert, he's curious— ready to begin it all again— This is the time for which we have been waiting.                                                 -Joyce Carol Oates                                                          Slate (Note: The letter from William Carlos Williams to his friend and editor James Laughlin was written sometime shortly prior to June 1962 when Williams' last book, Pictures From Breughel, was published.)   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ JONBENET RAMSEY, AMERICA'S MOST FAMOUS LITTLE GIRL   Though you learned the dance routines they made you learn,                and you were 1996 Little Miss Colorado,            1996 Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl,                     1996 America's Royale Little Miss,                        1996 Little Miss Charlevoix, and                         1996 National Tiny Miss Beauty,                                    it's never enough.                                                                     -Joyce Carol Oates Paris Review ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   KITE POEM                                                         (for Billy Collins) Some- thing there is in the American soul that soars with kites that soar! Some- thing alive with the roar of the wind lifting the kite that soars above rooftops, tree- tops, and awestruck heads! And yet— Something there is not in the American soul to adore the kite that fails to soar. I've seen it, I've feared it, and so have you. The kite whose tail is tattered in the TV antenna. The kite that rises thrillingly at dawn then crashes vertically at your feet. in a heap                     -Joyce Carol Oates    Slate      Katrina Index   Where is the long robust arm of America? The lone survivor of the arms race The sole imperium of the world That can strike terror into souls worlds away And amass relief to suffering humanity Another world away America Where is your legendary munificence Where is your kindness Where is your lightning speed Where is the rumored love of persons created equal?   Four days after the disaster Help begins to trickle in Were we half-asleep And just woken up to catastrophe? Servicemen were first to arrive Bearing arms not relief Ordering huddled and beaten folk To cower in their shame and nakedness To die famished and unsung A wayside and water-logged death   A newspaper said it loudly: Shame on U.S. For the storm has exposed the festering sore of a nation Which money thrown at will not white-wash But Americans are caring And readily open hands, hearts, and purse And the world also cares Offering tons of relief to a nation in disarray But our leaders took so long to rouse For this is not Schiavo Which summoned and polarized them swiftly   Still, as reckoning waits for time opportune Congress bickers over who will bell the cat And Bush four days after Declared lethargy unacceptable Aid, massive help, is on the way As new vast arenas are found To herd and barricade numberless poor and black And homes open their doors to succor distracted souls   O for a Guiliani To mobilize broken lives towards hope Then steps in Honore howling: Put those drawn rifles down This is no Iraq or Afghanistan These people need bread water shelter Not bullets and bayonets We have enough deaths from nature's furor And to Bush and FEMA: I need choppers I need food and water I need clothing and blankets I need truckloads of sustenance I need drugs to hold pandemic deaths at bay I need help to repair damage and rebuild lives And I need them now!   These have begun to come For, surely, this phoenix will rise again From the waters and ashes.                                                   -Dubem Okafor                              Tsunami, Katrina, and Other Poems    APPROACHING SEVENTY Index   Sit and watch the memory disappear romance disappear the probability of new adventures disappear well isn't it beautiful when the sun goes down don't we all want to be where we can watch it redden sink to a spark disappear * Your friend goes to Sri Lanka and works for a human rights organization in the middle of a civil war where she too might be disappeared any time and another friend goes to retreats sits miserably waiting for ecstasy and ecstasy actually comes, so many others so many serial monogamists seeking love some open doorway some wild furious breath * Please, I thought, when I first saw the paintings De Kooning did when Alzheimer's had taken him into its arms and he could do nothing but paint, purely paint, transparent, please let me make beauty like that, sometime, like an infant that can only cry and suckle, and shit, and sleep, boneless, unaware, happy, brush in hand no ego there he went * a field of cerise another of lime a big curve slashes across canvas then another and there it is the lucidity we long for it looks like everything belonging to the other world that we forget at birth is finally flooding back to the man like a cold hissing tide wave after wave where he waits on the shore of the quiet canvas brush in hand it comes * So give it up, gorgeous, get yourself over to the sandy shore with the sleeping gulls --does the tide rise or doesn't it and are you or are you not willing to rise from sleep, yes, in the dark, and patiently go outside and wait for it and do you know what is meant by patience do you know what is meant by going outside do you know what is meant by the tide                                        -Alicia Ostriker                                 American Poetry Review Matisse, Too Matisse, too, when the fingers ceased to work, Worked larger and bolder, his primary colors celebrating The weddings of innocence and glory, innocence and glory Monet when the cataracts blanketed his eyes Painted swirls of rage, and when his sight recovered Painted water lilies, Picasso claimed I do not seek, I find, and stuck to that story About himself, and made that story stick. Damn the fathers.   We are talking about defiance.                                         -Alicia Ostriker                                               Poetry

			SPIREA	Index

Neither the roaring lions, growling bears, snorting bull,
horses grazing and flying the heavens, nor the archer
stringing his bow care that I stand in the middle of this garden
at midnight gazing up, while my wife behind sleeping windows
embraces a distant dream. In my mother's garden
I was a child plucking the head of the snapdragon, pinching it
to open its pink mouth just after the rains had fallen.
This garden is not so ablaze and is never visited
by the hummingbird with its long beak taking its
life from a silent trumpet. The cat that dozed soft
as a cloud as I trimmed the hedge last spring
sleeps forever under the arms of the floating sprirea.
The moon swaggers around a cloud flirting with an oak,
then spreads out his rays like a randy peacock. Until then
I couldn't tell purple phlox from white fleabane,
one named flower the other weed. Allegories of seeds
mean nothing here, though being born in dirt must make
for a hard start. I know this; if you mow wild onions
they repay you with stink, but even mold can blossom.
With ears like folded blooms, I hear a voice in wind,
or it comes through their own sown tongues, for every plant
wants to grow like the morning glory. Though it
knows it's doomed, it climbs, not to display
its fragility to passing lovers, but to show gardeners
the contemptuous beauty of the uncultivated.

-William Page
Rattle

FLIGHT OF THE DEAD

The flight attendants have jumped to their seats
and strapped themselves in like bandidos.
I'm not sure if we're landing or ascending.
The intercom lightly shakes in its cradle.
For all I know we've begun a perpetual climb.
Whatever's shaken me from sleep makes me blink
at the white lines of light on the floor
mirroring stars I might see out my window.
But for the drone of engines hugging
the wings, I could be napping,
the TV wincing in the den. By now
we have passed above the graves of my parents,
long ago gone on their last flight into air.
What if I could coax out of the heavens my mother,
fire exploding from all horizons?
As we circle the heavens, could she
explain the aerodynamics of suffering,
how it intersects with the parable
of bliss? Would I learn there are no
secrets of life and death, only the vortex
of the one transcendent world?
But as I fly above the sleeping deer in the field,
the quiet birds in their woven nests, I know
I cannot disturb the dead whose love has gone
to ground. From this strange height I cannot
wake the terrified fox from its dream
nor still the stuttering owl. Except
for my waking to life, what can I
offer the radiance of morning?

-William Page
The Literary Review

SPIRES

Unknown to the sheep meandering
the meadowy sky, unknown to the
small birds picking in the garden
of his shadow, the red bull
with the short horns will
thrust his nostrils into the spring air
and sniff for the heifer's blossoms
he finds are fair, the chosen Charolais
still grazing, waiting for the magic
mountain of mounting, switching
her tail at the moving blotches of flies.
Without seeming to notice, her bulging
eyes are watching it all. Everywhere
the bulls of the earth are ready.
Their huge scrotums swing
like pendulums of time.
Their bellowing fills the hills
with the terrible echoes of wonder.
Once this red bull frolicked in a blaze
of setting sun. Today he will come as death
upon the world to make another.
Now he will plunge in the sheath
that will lather with foam of his sex.
And repeating the thrust, he comes
to the center where the sea
of himself will swim.
Now the bone of his flame
will fall like ashes.
His body will disappear
as smoke on the horizon
folds into night.
The moon will rise.
And the womb of the heifer will
fill with the future of fire,
for the mighty bull has lain down
for the grace of grasses
in all the pastures
where the shining beetle
rolls its dung into spires.

-William Page
The Southern Review

 

			THE THOUSAND THISTLE SEEDS	Index

          Ten years ago, I followed a lizard
Through a grassy, ruined amphitheater,
          Quick as quicksilver,
But green, not silver.
          The lizard darted,

Skimmed, froze,
          Shinnied, insinuated like flame,
A pinpoint of pulse and flash.
          The lizard knew
The Etruscan wall's cracks,

          The downspouts,
The stone that blunts the plow,
          The mortar's and stucco's flaws.
The lizard dwelt in a present
          That extends, elongates, thins

Into a filament of consumed air.
          I followed the lizard
From brick chink to olive grove,
          Poppies to straw,
To sand and loam.

          I knew, for a moment, the balance
Between the intimate and the infinite,
          A word and what it reckons.
The sun on the hilltop
          Flared upon the thousand thistle seeds,

The thousand virtues,
          The thousand minerals,
The thousandth of a second
          It takes the lizard to taste the moment
And change course.

Eric Pankey

The Pear As One Example: New & Selected Poems, 1984-2008
Ausable Press

			THE ART OF PAIN	Index

The pain we feel reading
mere words in a book
clings to us like static
on a cold day. The road
a woman walks in the last chapter
twists away from her happiness,
and the pain follows
wherever we go, haunting us
with its mute footsteps-- the ghost
of pain we have known

and of pain to come.
Small explosions
of grief in a sonnet sequence;
another fracture of innocence:
these are templates into which our lives
must fit themselves, moving shadows
the sun makes, rising and going down
on every page, as evening settles
into all the unswept, unexamined
corners of the world.

-Linda Pastan
The Gettysburg Review

			THE HOLE BESIDE THE HOUSE	Index

=scalped grass, trepanned soil, 
granite folds, gray, like a bare brain;

a collision of lilacs with lilac anti-matter;

the apple tree null with its perfume 
when everything fogged with mildew.

=a mutter when the backhoe idles,
mind-devouring decibels when it moves;

or TNT, as infant apples 
like pebbles=shrapnel; a sudden, public

subtraction from the backstory
of family life, old stone cellar with its fuse box,

fruit jars, potato bin, cistern.

= an addition, as if wed buried slaves
or a calf, alive, beneath cement.

 

                                -Joyce Peseroff

                                     Memorius


NO MORE WATER

God so loved the world
but we dont love him back,
maybe dont even believe

our fleabitten selves deserve affection
from a flea, let alone the Lord
of Hosts. We scratch, breeding
 
like feral cats in a landfill
who know life is garbage
in various stages of decay

and delight in the rats raw morsel,
sheltering beneath a ziggurat
of tires too bald for the cunning

broker of rebuilts and retreads
as the greasy world waits for rain.

 

                                  -Joyce Peseroff
                                      Memorious

 

			TRAVEL ADVISORY	Index

Early at the door landscape develops
like a glass plate.
Color added by seven grows modern by the hour,
the opposite of diving.
And just outside, the porch ceiling will suddenly
loft and expand
to an endlessness you cannot see the lights of.
Startled blackbirds
will explode like fugitive dark hearts and azaleas
hoot their fuschias in every direction.

And so they arrived at retirement.
A table by a lake overlooking bluebirds,
arms of the rocking chair
curled under at the ends. The lake combing itself
like the sky it admires.
Above the bed, flowers by one of the Dutchmen.
Yes there is a bed.
Years have not changed this anymore than eager leaves
chasing across the driveway.
Objects drift slowly through glycerine, stars,
bronze savvy of a bell
suspended above potato gravel with a braided chain.

-Allan Peterson
Full Circle Journal

 

			A VISIT TO THE BOW REPAIR SHOP	Index